Tufik emerged from his office with a canteen of water and crossed towards me, sweat springing from every pore. It was an effort for him to scramble up on to the old packing case that the two guards had stood on when stringing me up, but he made it and forced the neck of the canteen between my teeth. He gave me a short swallow and poured the rest over my head.
“You will be reasonable. Mr. Smith, when he returns. Promise me that. It will only be worse for you if you annoy him further.”
He stared at me anxiously, mopping his face with a soiled handkerchief. I was intrigued. For one thing, he’d called me mister, certainly the first time that had happened, and he was worried about me – too worried. It didn’t really make sense, but Husseini arrived before I could take it further.
His Land-Rover scattered the sheep a hundred yards on the other side of the village and braked to a halt outside the guard post. Husseini got out and came towards me. He stood perhaps ten yards away, staring up at me, his eyes full of hate, then turned abruptly and went into the guard post.
The sheep arrived, flooding in between the houses, spilling across the square as they pushed towards the pool on the far side. The boy I had noticed earlier was perhaps ten or eleven, small and dark and full of energy, running up and down whistling and flapping his arms in the air to keep them on the move. His three companions were typical Bedu in shabby robes, each man with his burnous folded across his face as a protection against the heavy dust raised by the sheep.
They passed by, heads down, pushing the flock hard, minding their own business, bells clanking in the stillness. It was very quiet, the sun half-way below the horizon now. Another thirty minutes and the gang would be returning from the pier and their day’s work.
The sheep were at the water, fighting each other for the best positions and the shepherds squatted against a wall watching them. The door of the guard post opened and Husseini emerged and came towards me, the two soldiers at his heels. When they cut me down, I collapsed in a heap on the ground. He said something or other, I couldn’t quite catch what it was, and they picked me up between them and followed him across the square to Tufik’s place.
The fat man lived alone except for some old woman who came in each day to cook and wash for him, and the house he had commandeered doubled as an office. There was a roll-top desk, two wooden chairs and a table. Husseini barked an order and the two soldiers sat me on one of the chairs and bound my arms firmly.
It was then that I noticed his whip, real rhino from the look of it, guaranteed to take the flesh from a man’s spine. He took off his tunic and started to roll up his sleeves very carefully. Tufik looked frightened to death and sweated more than ever. The two soldiers stood against the wall and Husseini picked up the whip.
“Now, Jew,” he said, bending it like a bow in his two hands. “To start with, a dozen. After that we shall see.”
“Major Husseini,” a voice said softly in English.
Husseini turned sharply and I lifted my head. Beyond him in the doorway stood one of the shepherds. His right hand went to his burnous, pulling it away, revealing a tanned, wedge-shaped face and the kind of mouth that looked as if it might twist into a smile at any moment, but seldom did, grey eyes, cold as water over stone.
“Sean?” I croaked. “Sean Burke? Could that be you?”
“As ever was, Stacey.”
His left hand came out of his robe holding a Browning automatic. His first shot took Husseini in the shoulder, twisting him round so that I looked into his face as he died. The second blew away the back of his head, driving him past me and into the wall.
The two soldiers stared stupidly, eyes widening in horror, their rifles still slung from their shoulders and died that way as a machine pistol smashed through the window and cut them down in two long bursts.
There was a kind of silence and Tufik was the first to speak, the words falling over themselves to get out. “I was worried, terribly worried. I thought you weren’t coming, that something might have gone wrong.”
Burke ignored him. He came forward slowly and leaned over me. “Stacey?” he said and touched my cheek gently with his left hand. “Stacey?”
There was pain on his face, something I had never seen before, and then that terrible killing rage for which he was so notorious. He turned on Tufik.
“What have you done to him?”
Tufik’s eyes widened. “What have I done, Effendi? But I am the one who has made all this possible.”
“I’ve just decided I don’t like your prices.”
The Browning swept up, Tufik cried out in fear and cowered in the corner. I shook my head and said weakly, “Leave him alone, Sean, he could have been worse. Just get me out of here.”
There was a momentary hesitation and then the Browning disappeared inside the robe. Tufik slid down on to his knees and started to cry weakly.
I might have known who the other two would be. Piet Jaeger, the South African, one of the few survivors of our old company in the Katanga campaign, and Legrande, the ex O.A.S. man Burke had recruited in Stanleyville when we had re-formed. Jaegar was driving Husseini’s Land-Rover and Legrande helped Burke lift me into the back seat. Nobody said very much and there was obviously some kind of time-table in operation.
Fuad was still quiet as the grave when we drove out along the so-called coast road, passing the column of prisoners marching in from their day’s work on the way.
“You haven’t got long,” I whispered.
Burke nodded. “We’re dead on time. Don’t worry.”
A mile further on, Jaeger swung off the road and took us through sand dunes to the edge of a broad flat beach. As he switched off the motor another sound filled the air and a plane came in off the sea no more than two or three hundred feet above the surface of the water. Legrande produced a Verey pistol and fired a flare and the plane turned sharply and dropped in for a perfect landing.
It was a Cessna, I recognised that much as it taxied towards us, but there was no time to stand around. They hustled me forward as the cabin door swung open and pushed me inside. The others followed and as Legrande fastened the door the Cessna was already turning into the wind, her engine note deepening.
Burke held a flask to my mouth and I choked as brandy burned its way into my stomach. When the coughing had subsided, I smiled weakly. “Where to now, colonel?”
“First stop Crete,” he said. “We’ll be there in an hour. Good thing, too. You could do with a bath.”
I took the flask from him and swallowed again and leaned back in my seat as a warm and wonderful glow spread throughout my body. Life began again, that was all I could think of. As the Cessna lifted into the air and turned out to sea, the sun died behind the horizon and night fell.
TWO
I FIRST MET Sean Burke in Lourenço Marques in Portuguese Mozambique in the early part of 1962 in a waterfront café called the “Lights of Lisbon.” I was playing piano at the time, one of the more useful byproducts of an expensive education, but wholly for money.
For reasons which aren’t important at the moment, I was an aimless drifter at the grand old age of nineteen, working my way from Cairo to the Cape in easy stages. I was in Lourenço Marques because I’d only had enough money to take me that far on boarding the coastal steamer at Mombasa which didn’t worry me particularly. I was young and fit, running so hard from the past that my only concern was to discover what lay beyond each day’s horizon.
In any case, I liked Lourenço Marques. It had a kind of baroque charm and, in those days at least, a complete absence of the kind of racial tensions I’d noticed elsewhere in Africa.
The man who ran the “Lights of Lisbon” was named Coimbra, a thin, cadaverous Portuguese with one interest in life – money. He had a hand in most things as far as I could judge and didn’t have a scruple in the world. Whatever you wanted, Coimbra could get it for you at a price. We boasted the finest selection of girls on the coast.